Offset smokers vs vertical pit style, which makes the best bbq?

Strictly going off of your question in the title, Offset.

But whether it's worth the labor is up to you.

Ultimately you want to be able to burn a nice hot clean fire with no creosote and be able to control the air temperature and radiation the meat sees. A horizontal stick burner allows you to burn a nice hot clean fire since the fire is not underneath the meat. Radiation is normally only a problem near the fire box and is controlled with a heat shield or water pan.

But that radiation can be a good thing since you have a hot spot you can take advantage of to adjust the surface textures of your meat. Say you've smoked some chicken and want to crisp up the skin? Stick it near the fire box. That's what we would do with our large offset on a trailer. Smoke on the far end and as it's almost ready to pull put it by the fire box to get the outside texture what we want.

The vertical smoker with the heat source underneath requires a good heat shield to block all of the radiation from your heat source heating up your meet too fast. That's the main reason for the water pan which acts like a giant heat shield as the water never gets above 212F so you never get radiative heat transfer. But if you burn the fire hot to keep the smoke that nice thin blue smoke you boil away the water out of the water pan faster. Long burns can require refilling the water pan. With less hot spots in a vertical with large water pan it's more of set and forget and more consistent across the cooking surface. You don't need to worry about hot spots or uneven cooking across your product. With that consistency you lose versatility. If you are like me and tend to smoke your chicken at a higher temperature than your pork or beef a good horizontal smoker gives you this versatility of doing all at the same time on the same cook. Vertical smoker everything will be smoked at the same temperature. If I have chicken and pork on the vertical smoker at the same time I will have to finish my chicken on a grill to get the skin to a texture I want.

If your main goal is easier I think a vertical is easier to cook on and more consistent. A horizontal will have a bigger learning curve as you get to learn how to control the temperature gradient across the horizontal and get the learn it's quirks and hot spots. Horizontal takes more constant attention because of the temperature gradient across the cooking surfaces. But the temperature gradient and hot spots can be a tool. For example. Thick ribs on the hot end and thinner ribs on the cool and and you can get all the ribs to finish around the same time. Instead of having the thin ribs overcooked or the thick ribs undercooked or having to monitor them all and pull them as they finish at different times.

Is much as I loved the horizontal I never use it any more. I've swayed more towards easier cooks so I'm all about pellets or propane for my smokes now. So I would lean towards the vertical. My vertical I've seen was a large propane unit someone rednecked a firebox on the side. So he can run it as a vertical with offset fire box and then switch to propane to make finishing and temperature control easier. With both running at the same time he can get the temps up to 450 degrees in the cabinet.

One style is not better than the other style. It all depends on the quality of the pit and the cook.